Contributed by Sri Harsha Pulipaka
Jandhyaala.. Every Telugu speaking person on this planet have enjoyed and cherished his films. Used his dialogues in their day to day lives, especially the crazy pure Telugu curse words which are as beautiful as blessings and are as funny as humour itself. He invented a new kind of Telugu cinema and the language itself. He is a combination of Trivikram and Sreenu Vaitla to the 80’s and 90’ youngsters. A great master of old classic comedy and his films are a sweet memory to all the 90’s born kids. He may be the first director who wrote stories and executed them solely with a set of comedians in his films taking the major portions of every scene only making the main leads a side kick and scored huge blockbusters.
The writer in him was honored and praised by all the critics and film enthusiasts of his time and his stories resonated with great characterizations were always noted as landmarks to the careers of those artists who performed them. But I think many of those critics and movie lovers and even now know a very little about the directorial brilliance of Jandhyaala gaaru. Visionary directors like Maniratnam, RGV were always acknowledged for their technical brilliance and innovative craft. But little was noticed from this man who is at least a decade senior to them who did some brilliant work in the field of direction too.
In this article would like to explore the “DIRECTOR” Jandhyaala gaaru through one is finest piece of work Sreevariki Premalekha.
1. As I said that I’m going to explore the director jandhyala gaaru this film also has limited work done by writer Jandhyaal gaaru. Yes, this film was inspired form a novel ‘Premalekha’ published in Chatura Magzine written by Potturi Vijayalakshmi. Jandhyaal gaaru only worked for dialogues and screenplay for the film.
2. The film opens with all the character introductions. The introduction scene of Nutana Prasad and Sree Lakshmi couple is shown as people surrounding their house suspiciously after hearing some heart wrenching words spoken loudly by Sree Lakshmi, thinking that she is being ill treated by Nutana Prasad. Then Nutana Prasad shows up to the people saying that there is nothing to worry as his wife is narrating him the film Lava-Kusa she saw recently. The shot is this
Indicating that the actual scenario is exactly reverse to what they are thinking. He is getting sweet tortures of his wife’s Cinema Picha. He cannot escape her as she is his wife. So he surrendered to her. Look, he is behind the bars!!!
3. The most important and interesting character in this film is of Heroin’s. Her introduction simply starts with a bet with her friends that every man is always desperate for a woman. We weren’t even shown what the bet was. As soon as they challenge her, the scene simply cuts to the temple where a priest is performing puja. She proves her point there and no further discussions or dialogues appear. The shot crisply cuts to her friend’s face who lost the bet and then pans to her sari fold at her navel. She simply flips the fold and coins fall out of it. The scene ends.
We don’t get to see this kind of visual narration very often even now in modern films but from a 1984 film, it’s par excellence. Well how did she proved it..?!!! Watch the film.!
4. Heroin is a free spirited independent woman who doesn’t believe much about regular love between youngsters and typical marriage system of India. She simply reads out the friend’s personal letter loud out. She feels that she is above all these stupid romantic feelings. Look at the shot.
5. After few acts of proving her point, her friends accepts it. But she doesn’t leave the topic. Then she proposes a prank love letter concept to them. There is where the entire story premise is revealed. This scene happens inside a circular tower. Here she tells her entire plan by walking circularly inside the tower as her friends follow. This initially symbolizes that she is repeatedly coming back to the same topic. After watching the entire film we realizes that it is actually the journey of her’s and her letter throughout the film.
6. The letter writing scene: At the tower, one of her friends ask that if she can write a love letter as she is never into such feeling “practicelekunda premalekha ela raastave?” is the dialogue. She answers arrogantly that she can write 1000 letters per minute. But she soon realizes that it is not easy.
Actually, even before the arrogant dialogue starts, the tower scene ends with a cut to a few crumbled papers thrown, where the next scene starts. As the dialogue goes on the camera pans to heroin revealing her throwing another failed attempt. Her confidence is built with the dialogue in the minds of audience and is proved as over confidence with the visual in a single shot. Jandhyaala gaaru doesn’t waste time.!
7.Then she slowly realizes that she has to respect genuine feelings and should surrender to them. Look at the shot where she finally cracks the code to write the most romantic love letter.
Behind the bars. We can also see Naresh standing far behind her out focused. This is the fragment of her imagination as she doesn’t know him. The whole song is visualized in the same way.
8.This letter goes to Suttivelu who is a middle aged co-worker of Naresh with the same name ‘Ananda Rao’. the scene where Suttivelu gets the letter, he opens it in his house. That room consists of two posters of little kids. The way these posters are used in the scene with brisk cuts are absolutely brilliant.
The two posters reveal the anticipation of audience in what happens next and Suttivelu’s innocence. There is an old film technique called mise-en-scene which states that not only character or a dialogue or an expression but an object in the scene can also move the story forward and reveal the emotion of the scene. I don’t know whether Jandhyaala gaaru knows this or not but his composition must be appreciated. That too in a 1984 Telugu film. Extraordinary!!!
9. The entire film consists of many minute scene transitions where a dialogue which opens a scene also applies to the previous scene content but are not directly related. The rapid cuts and jump cuts are typically used to generate comedy are simply brilliant. Many of the above techniques are used in international cinema mostly in the genres of thriller and suspense. But Jandhyaala gaaru used them to generate subtle and sensible comedy.
10. The climax of the film needs to be mentioned specially. The drama that plays in the climax which is a series of red and green signals to hero and heroin’s marriage has typical parallel narrative structure where many events going on are interlinked. Though these are small and simple points, they are edited brilliantly. This didn’t got viewed as great film technique because the genre is absolutely comedy.
Bonus Point: 11. This film even has a crazy set of characters around Hero.
Hero’s father- Crazy about curse words Hero’s Sister in law- Crazy about cooking Hero’s Aunt- Crazy about Movies Hero’s Servant- Crazy about Alcohol
